Digital Editions of EPW Books

Appeal for Donations to the Corpus of Sameeksha Trust

This is an appeal to the subscribers, contributors, advertisers and well-wishers of Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), published by Sameeksha Trust, a public charitable trust registered with the office of the Charity Commissioner, Mumbai, India. EPW has completed 50 years of publication. Details here.

You are here

Special Issues

New castes and classes have entered the academy in recent years, but we have few suggestions for constructive engagement with the new groups coming into the academy. There has been the intergenerational change as well, which has had its own impact. We need to address these issues if we are to understand the state of social sciences. We need above all to cultivate a critical self-reflexivity - an awareness of who "we" are and where we stand when asking and answering such questions.

It is important to make the ICSSR truly autonomous, but the question is whether the Review Committee's detailed plan for autonomy is desirable and feasible. One could also consider alternative plans to the committee's proposals for introducing accountability in the research institutions.

The financial disaster that erupted in east Asia 10 years ago had a devastating impact on Indonesia as the economic contraction was the worst among all the affected countries. Indonesia experienced the entire range of economic crises, from an exchange rate collapse to a liquidity crunch and banking sector breakdown, leading ultimately to bankruptcy in the corporate sector. This paper reviews the social and economic costs of policy errors including the bitter experience with the International Monetary Fund, which, in fact, escalated the crisis. The efforts to bring an end to the imf programme were thwarted by the actions pushed by the new era economic group that deepened the dependence on international debt.

The article constructs a theory to understand a financial crisis in an open third world economy in the context of a sequence of stock equilibria, ensured by inelastic expectations. It then explores the predicament of such an economy when it "opens up" to global financial flows. In the absence of central bank intervention it has to face financial crises. But central bank intervention aimed at avoiding financial crises by stabilising the exchange rate and holding foreign exchange reserves pushes the economy to a perennial stock disequilibrium.

The 1997 east Asian crisis marks a major shift in the role and prospects of private domestic capital, part of a major adjustment to globalisation with far-reaching implications. Over the second-half of the 20th century, Thai domestic capital had played a key role in expanding the productive potential of the economy. After the crisis, it has been confined mostly to a rentier and service role in an economy dominated by multinational firms.

In the wake of the east Asian financial crisis in mid-July 1997, not only were the initial policy initiatives taken by the Malaysian government to counter portfolio capital flight ill-conceived, the currency and capital control measures seem to have been motivated by political considerations and the desire to protect well-connected businesses. The Malaysian experiment with capital controls was compromised by political bias, abuse by vested interests and inappropriate policy instruments. However, this is not to reject the desirability of the judicious use of capital controls.

Statistical data indicate that the Philippines has recovered post-2002 from the east Asian financial cataclysm. Recovery has been spurred by services and overseas workers' remittances, but the share of agriculture has declined and the industrial sector has been stagnant. There is also the view that the growth rates of recent years have been overestimated and the effects of the crisis have not been completely erased. This paper points out that there is a need for prudent macroeconomic policies that will help avoid vulnerability and prevent a déjà vu.

Ten years after the east Asian crisis, the volume of capital flows to developing countries has exploded, but has vulnerability to crises been reduced because of the prudence built into the financial system? On the contrary, we are in fact witnessing trends, which imply an increase in financial fragility that can lead to further crises, with extremely adverse implications for growth, stability, employment and social welfare. New measures to govern finance and financial flows are a necessity.

In this paper, the post-crisis experience of the five economies of Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines is considered. It is found that while output growth has recovered to varying degrees, in all these countries there has been a significant change in the pattern of growth and investment, which has meant that the subsequent growth has had very different implications for employment generation, compared to the previous period.

Until 1997, successive governments of South Korea had pursued "developmental citizenship" - industrialisation at a pace that created jobs and raised incomes, even if social security benefits were minimum. The late 1990s crisis ended all that: the South Korean economy has recovered and is growing strongly but the quality of life has not. Temporary and underpaid jobs have become normal and on-the-job poverty has increased sharply. Income inequality has worsened and the population under the official poverty line has sharply increased in number and as a proportion of the population.

Young women in India are less likely than young men to be aware of sexual and reproductive health matters or be able to negotiate safe/wanted sex with spouses and partners. This special issue explores the sexual and reproductive health situation among youth in Bihar and Jharkhand, two states that are rarely studied from this perspective.